


Consumed

by nerdythangs



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Blood Drinking, Fluff, M/M, Sickfic, UST, almost smutty, i tried writing angst, tuberculosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 03:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdythangs/pseuds/nerdythangs
Summary: How ironic, he mused. A devilish beast craving salvation.





	Consumed

The young master was dying. 

The wheezing, labored breaths shakily left the Earl's mouth as his chest rose up and down painfully. Coughs, that varied in intensity, wracked his small frame, bringing up blood frequently that bespattered dozens of white handkerchiefs. His slight frame shivered as his head tossed back and forth feverishly, as if trying to deny the reality of the situation. The nightshirt and bed sheets clung to his small, sweaty body, and periodically his hands grasped whatever was around him to try and ground himself.

The lead doctor had already suggested bringing in a priest, which Sebastian quickly shot down. The rest of the staff were quarantined from their master's chamber in fear of contamination, and argued for the butler's well being when he insisted on staying by the young lord's side. He'd be further damned if he weren't doing everything in his demonic power to save the young master.

How ironic, he mused. A devilish beast craving salvation.

The medical staff theorized that the young lord's asthma exacerbated the consumption exponentially, bringing his body into a nose-dive towards a 6 foot grave. Sebastian knew the odds were against them as he desperately paced back and forth to come up with an idea. His powers could rebuild and destroy lives, deceive and seduce humans, but never had he used them before to save someone. His hands ran messily through his hair since he had no reference, no sacred text to refer to. 

He kept coming back to the same idea, a thought that plagued him when they first discovered the disease: possession. But not in a typical sense, since he wouldn't want to necessarily take over the body of his young master, but rather take from it. A typical possession would center around spell work, but this ceremony would have to remain physical due to the nature of the situation.

Contrary to the medieval priests and zealots Sebastian encountered in the past, bodily possession wasn't an easy task, and he didn't know how to alter the steps drastically; he only hoped that intent would somehow alter the result and keep the little lord from an earlier grave. 

He paused in his pacing to regard his master on the bed. For the first time that he could ever remember, Sebastian was not just nervous, he was worried. Barely fighting for life at this point, Ciel's soul still called out to him, luring him and encouraging him to do anything he could. 

Without any other options, Sebastian leaned over the body of his young master and unbuttoned his nightshirt to the bottom of his sternum and took off his own gloves. As he bit into his left thumb, he spread the shirt wide with his right hand to give him enough working space. 

The contract mark glowed brightly when he pressed his bloody thumb to Ciel's skin. He drew a pentagon, not unlike the one on the back of his hand, and outlined symbols at each point, particularly focused on the markings above the young boy's lungs. Once finished there, he drew ancient symbols on each cheek, brushed back his sweaty hair, and drew a line across his forehead.

Finished with the markings, Sebastian licked at his thumb and looked over his work. Everything looked in its right place; despite that he hadn't done a possession in quite some time, but now came the tricky part. He needed to ask for permission while Ciel was in his delirious state. 

“Young master,” he began, shaking his shoulder. 

Ciel murmured a terribly soft moan in response. 

Sebastian sighed, and tried again. “Young master, wake up.”

The ghastly white eyelids twitched, but nothing else.

He shook the young Earl again. “Young master, please wake up,” he said, but this time there was no response at all. 

The room was eerily silent. 

Sebastian paused for a moment. Did he--? 

“Young master?” His heart, typically dormant, started to pound rapidly in his chest. “Young master, please.” 

Sebastian shook him again, the small body shaking lifelessly, “Young master, you must wake up.” 

“Young master,” Sebastian felt his breath quickening, a terrible dread settling in the pit of his stomach.

“Young master. Master!” His voice sounded less and less like an Earl's butler, and more like a heartbroken man. “Please, you must wake up. Please, Master. Please!” 

A loud cough broke through the pleas, breaking the mantra.

Blood flew from Ciel's mouth, splattering onto Sebastian's starched shirt and the bedsheets. Sebastian let out a breath of respite, and waited for his master to clear his lungs. When the coughing fit was over, a horribly pained moan resounded, as if Ciel regretted coming back. 

Sebastian placed his hand on the side of his lord's face, and raised it to meet his own. “Young master, you must listen to me. I need your permission. I need you to stay awake for just a moment.”

“Hnng...” Eyelids fluttered, a dull blue and violet peeking out from underneath the lashes. 

“I need you to grant me permission to possess you.” That sounded wrong. “It will not be a full possession,” he clarified, “I am hoping to take on your illness.” No need to explain to the dying boy that he would recover quickly from it. 

“Nnnmm,” A heavy weight started to settle in the demon's hand. Sebastian thumbed around the markings on his cheeks, gently prying Ciel to stay awake.

“Young master, I need you to grant the permission to withdraw your disease. Afterwards you can sleep as long as you'd like.”

The unfocused bicolored gaze settled on Sebastian's face, and slowly came into recognition. His pupils dilated slightly as he took in the nervous features of his butler, and the minutest of a smile twitched at a corner of his mouth. 

“Do it,” Ciel whispered, and then coughed. 

Relief ran over Sebastian, and he returned the small smirk, releasing his Master's face. “Yes, my lord.”

Instead of bringing his being into Ciel's body, Sebastian decided that the blood aspect of the possession ceremony would be the most integral part. Focusing his purpose on removing the disease instead of Ciel's soul, Sebastian leaned down and bit deeply into the bottom left symbol on pentagram.

Nothing could have prepared Sebastian for the small taste of his Master's soul. Even with that small spurt there was a resonating tang of death, but below that he found everything he wanted and somehow more. His tongue rolled over the complexities of Ciel's hatred, pride, ambitions, and ruthlessness, as well as his lingering innocence, his naivete, and something else his palate could not decipher. 

Ciel's body froze and he let out a small cry of pain as Sebastian sucked greedily, drawing the contamination out of him. Ciel grasped at his butler's shoulders weakly, feebly trying to push him away. The pain abruptly ended when Sebastian withdrew his mouth, and licked the wound he inflicted. 

“Ah...!” Ciel stared down at the demon, whose tongue flicked over the bite mark. His red, glowing eyes drifted up as he finished sealing the incision. It shouldn't have been arousing at all, with Sebastian's lips stained fresh with his blood, a smear that clung to his teeth. Nevertheless, an unexpected flush danced across the young lord's face when their eyes locked, feeling suddenly and uncomfortably intimate. 

“Is that...it?” He gasped out before shouting again when Sebastian focused his gaze back at his chest and bit down on the top symbol. 

A shaky exhale unintentionally left Sebastian as he drew pull after pull of this beautiful, wonderful, intoxicating blood. He felt drunk on it, his eyes rolling in back of his head and he fought with everything he had to not moan aloud. He spent a few moments relishing in the taste, the texture, the aroma of this heavenly essence, before releasing his grip. 

Done with that section, he gave the same healing licks to the abused flesh, and looked back up at his contractor. Realization struck him as Ciel's wincing face looked like an enticing combination of flustered and bothered. My, oh my.

“I take it you're already feeling better, my lord?” He asked as he slid over to the next emblem. 

“I-- ah!” Ciel gritted his teeth and Sebastian's teeth sunk once again into his flesh. The bottom right symbol throbbed in pain as Ciel felt a contradiction of strength and weakness, pain and slowly building arousal. The top half of his butler's body that was trapping him was warm and firm, and the feel of his lips on his skin was enticing. A small, low grunt emerged from his focused demon, and Ciel, ever the opportunist, took that to mean something.

Acting braver than he felt, Ciel reached down and carded his fingers through the demon's jet black hair, just as Sebastian was letting up. Demonic eyes coyly and inquisitively gazed up again, as he thoroughly licked the spot he had just been sucking. Ciel's chest rose up and down quickly, now with less wheezing and more desire. The blush that painted his cheeks must have multiplied, and Sebastian thought he looked rather fetching with a lust-lidded gaze. Who would have guessed his little lord was such a masochist.

“You like this, don't you?” The demon purred as he slowly climbed from the side of the bed to straddle the young body.

Ciel's hand dropped and his eyes narrowed, trying not to show how pleased he was with this turn of events. “So do you,” he huffed unconvincingly.

“Mmmm,” Sebastian leaned down above the fourth mark, this one around the young lord's nipple and flicked it briefly with his tongue, “Yes, I do.”

There was no pained yelping from Ciel this time, only a pleasurable gasp as his back arched up into that mouth. His small hands flew into Sebastian's hair weakly, as the rush of arousal seemed to simultaneously stimulate him and wear him out, articulating each suck of blood. 

“Ah! Hnng! Ngh!” 

A gravely moan left Sebastian as he released his Master's nipple, licking the particularly sensitive flesh slowly and purposefully. As the deft, wet tongue darted all over to clean up the remnants of the symbol, Sebastian contemplated about how wonderfully tempting about the mingling of both of their blood on his palate. The dark corruption of his sinful essence combined with Ciel's debauched innocence made a singularly exquisite amalgamation. 

“One more and we should be done.” Sebastian stated, as if declaring the day's schedule.

Sebastian was moving to the last symbol when his elbow buckled a bit. Cough after cough immediately arose from the demon, and he strove to cover it with one of the clean handkerchiefs on the bedside table.

“Sebastian!” Ciel went to sit up to see him better, but immediately collapsed back down into the soft down pillows in a fit of anemic dizziness.

Recovering, Sebastian inspected the blood-covered handkerchief with disdain before tucking it away. “My, my, what a pair we are.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Ciel demanded, admittedly with less ire than usual. His flush was drastically reduced, replaced by the pale complexion from before.

Sebastian chose not to answer, but slowly made his way back to the edge of the bed. “I anticipate that this disease will hit me quick, so may I suggest that we continue this conversation when we're both recovered?”

Ciel frowned, flushed a bit more, and averted his gaze. “Whatever, just do what you need to do.” 

“Yes, my lord.” Ciel didn't need to see the sly bastard's face to know he was smirking. 

Sebastian settled into the bedside chair and leaned over to the last symbol above his Master's heart. The human heart; what a fickle thing, he thought to himself as clamped down one last time. 

“Ah--!”

Sebastian tried to savor this last taste of his young master's soul while he could, but it was difficult while concurrently fighting off an oncoming coughing fit. Yet despite the barriers, he reveled in the novelty despite it being his fifth sample, and tried to memorize every detail of it on his tongue. The bitter sweetness really was incomparable. He took one last pull, focused on that bit of it that he could not quite identify, something that he pinned as being uniquely human and therefore he probably would never understand it, before he set to the task of sealing up the incision.

Once finished, he noticed that his unusually docile young lord had actually fallen asleep. Sebastian sighed. Typical. Leave it to him, now riddled with consumption, to clean up the mess. 

Feeling weaker by the moment, Sebastian quickly grabbed a damp cloth to clean up the demonic blood markings off of his young lord's body and face, and buttoned his nightshirt up quickly. After settling back into the chair and replacing his gloves, Sebastian took hold of the Earl's wrist to measure his pulse rate to monitor Ciel's progress.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

The metronome of his heart pulsed steadily, signifying that the quasi-possession was successful. Sebastian's chest rattled with coughs periodically, but not with the intensity that plagued his young master. He kept an eye on Ciel, knowing that by morning his body would have worked its way through the virus that would have killed the sleeping boy on the bed. 

“Humans,” An amused scoff turned into a cough.

Some not-so-subtle murmuring began to bring Sebastian out of a reverie that he didn't even realize he had fallen into an indeterminate amount of time later. 

“Do you think the young master feeling better?” The young voice of Finny said in a stage whisper. 

“He doesn't look like he's on death's door anymore,” observed Bard in his best imitation of a whisper.

“But look at Mr. Sebastian!” Mey-rin's shrill pierced through the room.

“Rather unlike his typical aesthetic, says Emily,” Snake was always the most quiet, but that comment stopped Sebastian short. Unlike his aesthetic?!

“A butler must always put his master's health and well-being first. Mr. Sebastian has possibly sacrificed his own health to look after our young master,” Tanaka's sage voice said.

Sebastian gathered his awareness to finally open his eyes blearily. He was slumped over the bedside chair, with his head resting on the mattress shockingly close to Ciel. His clothing was askew and bunched inappropriately, and his hair splayed out messily. His hand still laid atop of his master's slight wrist to monitor the pulse, but one could easily mistake it for simply holding hands. The illness must have sapped a fair amount of his energy, luring him into sleep for a number of hours. The severe lack of propriety on his part was appalling.

But for some reason, Sebastian couldn't bring himself to care. He closed his eyes again, reveling in the soft mattress and the smell of sleep and the lingering tang of blood around him. The relief that Ciel's pulse still steadily thumped and his lungs sounded clear made him feel something that he didn't care to analyze at that moment too closely. 

He heard Tanaka politely urging the obtuse staff to leave the quarters, allowing Sebastian a bit more time to collect his thoughts and assess his own well-being to see if any of the consumption remained. 

“I thought they'd never leave.” 

Sebastian snapped his head up to see Ciel staring at him rather closely. “I didn't realize that my young master was awake,” Sebastian said as he made to sit up. 

Ciel grabbed the hand that was checking his pulse all night. 

“Wait.” 

Halfway sitting up, Sebastian's eyebrows curiously lifted. “Yes, my lord?” 

“Stay here.” The look in Ciel's eye said that he didn't mean on the chair.

A crooked smile threatened to tug on a corner of Sebastian's mouth. “As my master wishes.” 

Sebastian quickly slipped off his tailcoat and polished shoes, and gracefully crawled into the bed. He unceremoniously scooped the little Earl into his arms, and buried his face into his hair, inhaling his uniquely addicting scent.

“Gah!” The complaint had poorly concealed pleasure. “I'm not one of your cats!” 

“Mmm, really?” Sebastian tugged off his gloves to lightly scratch at Ciel's scalp. A sound of contentment escaped below. “That was rather like a purr if I wasn't mistaken.”

An almost-happy sigh responded. “Shut up.” Ciel snuggled into his butler's embrace a bit further, snaking his arms around his chest.

Knowing they couldn't spend the entire day like that, Sebastian decided to take in and memorize every detail. The sun, after two weeks of rain, flitted across the bed spread and floor, with small bits of dust dancing around it. He could hear the sparrows singing outside and the occasional breeze shuffling the leaves in the trees. His young lord's breathing slowly deepened in an unrestrained, healthy way, and his warm body seemed to mark wherever it touched Sebastian. The fine grey hair slightly tickled Sebastian's chin, and he could count the ribs he felt through his master's nightshirt. The young boy's toes twitched periodically around Sebastian's shins, catching at the wool pants, and his fingers played softly with the shirtsleeves and sometimes boldly with the back muscles underneath. 

In short, it was perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay a few things: Thank you, again, to my forever beta tasty-kate, and to Dragonsploosh for encouraging me.
> 
> I wanted to write this for two reasons:
> 
> A) The image of Sebastian slumped over Ciel's bed holding his wrist to monitor his pulse all night has been plaguing my brain for like, nearly a year now.
> 
> B) I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else write about the most romantic Victorian disease before! I mean, what could be more alluring than watching your loved one cough up blood repeatedly and slowly whither away? Actually, on second thought, I have no idea why tuberculosis is romanticized in period dramas, but here we are. 
> 
> Also, Please ignore any plot holes or ridiculousness with the spell/possession logic. I'm not that creative. Kudos and comments much appreciated!


End file.
